


tip my king

by Areiton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angry Stiles Stilinski, Christmas, Derek Hale Comes Back, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Domestic, Hurt Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Stiles-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-10 21:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12920151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: The thing is--he knew the moment he saw it, sitting innocently on his windowsill, who the present was from.It made his stomach churn and his heart pound but he’d come to grips with the tumultuous feelings that Derek Hale inspired in himyearsago.





	tip my king

**Author's Note:**

> This is fluffy fluff, but there is one spot that gets a little angsty emotional. Full spoilery warning at the end.  
> Happy holidays, friends. <3

The package sits inconspicuously under the tree for four days, out of place among the other packages. It’s sloppily wrapped with plain brown paper and too much tape, and it sticks out like a sore thumb surrounded by the bright greens and shiny silvers, the vibrant reds of the perfectly wrapped presents placed there by Stiles and the bags taped shut by the Sheriff, and the smaller, festively bowed presents from Melissa and Lydia and Kira. There’s another brown package, stamped with  _ Brazil _ that almost matches it. 

It sits there, and Stiles ignores it, and the Sheriff side eyes it a little, but he doesn’t ask. 

Stiles is pretty sure his dad is the best. 

~*~

They have a pretty solid routine, for Christmas. They spend it together, and Stiles makes a mountain of bacon that he doesn’t even complain about his dad eating, while the Sheriff makes chleb and potato pancakes. 

They open presents together and the Sheriff leaves for his shift at the station, a little early. 

Stiles doesn’t mention that he knows his dad goes to the cemetery, before heading to work. 

The Sheriff doesn’t mention that he knows Stiles will swing by for a half hour, before he heads to the McCalls. 

Sometimes not talking is the best way they have of communicating. 

~*~

The Sheriff nudges the sloppily wrapped brown paper present. “It doesn’t have a name.” 

Stiles nods, and catches it when his dad throws it to him. “I know. Found it in my room.” 

The Sheriff’s eyebrows shoot up at that but he doesn’t demand anything. He’s relaxed, some, as the years slip by and the supernatural shitstorm eased, and Stiles stopped looking bruised and exhausted. 

He eyes his son now. “Stay safe, kid.” 

~*~

The thing is--he knew the moment he saw it, sitting innocently on his windowsill, who the present was from. 

It made his stomach churn and his heart pound but he’d come to grips with the tumultuous feelings that Derek Hale inspired in him  _ years _ ago, and he refused to backslide now. So he shook the package that felt heavy and real and then tucked it under the tree, and ignored it. 

~*~

When he opens it, he stares for a long time. 

Then, because when Derek is involved, there is only one inevitable answer, he calls Scott. 

~*~

He turns the music up too loud while he drives, because if he thinks too much, he thinks he’ll turn around and he doesn’t want to. 

This has been a long time coming. So he listens to Christmas carols at an obscenely high level, and he drives and he refuses to think about what this means and what is waiting on the other end of the drive. 

~*~

The docks near the marina are deserted because it’s fucking  _ Christmas _ and even in California, most people aren’t going out on the water in the dead of December. He shoves his hands into his pockets and walks, his steps echoing on the wooden slats, and out over the water. 

And then, there, at the fourteenth dock. 

It’s name is painted in neat scrawling lines, and his breath catches as he looks at it.  _ Redspark. _

The boat is dark and it looks….kinda shitty, honestly. It’s gleaming and newly painted, but it’s tiny, barely half the size of the massive yachts that flank it. It’s clunky but homey, too, and he thinks that there have been far worse places that he’s found the man standing on the deck, waiting for him. 

“You asshole,” Stiles says, the first words he’s spoken to Derek Hale in six years.

~*~

When Derek left Beacon Hills, it broke something in Stiles. He didn’t talk about it--there wasn’t anything to  _ say _ . They weren’t anything, really. They were a lot of aggression and history, saving each other time and time again, they were antagonism that gave way to grudging respect, that gave way to... _ something _ more. But it was ill-defined at best, and imagined at worst. 

Then he left, left at Braeden’s side, and it broke apart every fledgling hope for the future Stiles had. 

He reached out, for a while. Texts into the void, that eventually started getting kicked back as undeliverable, but they were never answered. He never spoke to Derek after that night in Mexico but he never quite got over the  _ what if _ of him either. 

Maybe that’s why  he was here, the sun setting on the water and Derek watching him with patient eyes. 

~*~

He looks...better. Older, with a streak of grey in the actual honest to god  _ beard _ he’s got, softer lines around his face. He’s still gorgeous, with that defined causal strength that used to get Stiles off when he got home from pack nights. 

His eyes are still bright and indescribably beautiful, but they’re open now, not the haunted sadness and terror Stiles used to see looking back at him. 

“Are you gonna stand there or do you want to come in?” Derek says, arching an eyebrow and Stiles huffs and steps onto the boat. 

~*~ 

The interior of the houseboat is small and cozy and warm. Derek looks a little nervous as he looks around it, almost--shy. Stiles can feel him watching as he looks around, taking in the overstuffed single bookshelf, the bed he doesn’t allow himself to linger on, the tiny counter that serves as a kitchen. The bed is messy, like Derek didn’t expect Stiles to come, but there’s a second bowl set out, a glass waiting and Stiles gives the werewolf a raised eyebrow. 

Derek shrugs. “I didn’t expect you to come. But. I hoped.”

~*~

It’s awkward. Derek fusses with the pot on his tiny stove, and Stiles drums his fingers on the table and wonders why the hell he thought this was good idea. 

Just because they were….something….a thousand years ago, doesn’t mean they have anything in common now. 

Doesn’t mean Stiles even wants Derek in his life, now. 

“You back in town?” Stiles asks, when the silence stretches too long and Derek flicks a look at him, a tiny smile. 

“Maybe,” he says, and dishes out some of the stew. He puts crusty bread and warm butter on the table and fills Stiles glass with a deep red that smells amazing. 

The whole thing is so surreal he wants to pinch himself. 

Instead, he says, “Maybe sounds like you.” 

He tries to pretend he doesn’t see Derek’s flinch. 

~*~

It feels like a first date. Stilted and painful and polite. Derek is attentive to the point of irritability, humming acknowledgment when Stiles rambles about his thesis and going into the academy to become a deputy. He talks, briefly, about Cora and inquires after Scott and the pack, and it’s so damn polite it’s _ infuriating.  _

But Derek has a reason. There’s gotta be  _ something _ or he never would have brought Stiles here. So he eats his damnably delicious stew-- _ it’s my father’s. He made it for the pack every Christmas eve-- _ and drinks his wine and waits as Derek talks about everything that means absolutely nothing. 

Until the wine is gone and the two bowls and spoons have been washed and stowed and there is nothing else, just a stretching silence between them, and Stiles nods, offers up a smile that feels bitter. “Yeah, well, this has been fun. See you in six years or so,” he stands and Derek--

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. 

It’s the wrong thing to say. 

~*~

Stiles didn’t talk about it, when Derek left. He took care of the pack and he went to school and he attended college and when someone brought him up, mentioned Cora in passing, Stiles changed the subject, left the room, checked out completely. 

He didn’t know how to deal with watching Derek dying, and watching Derek leave. 

So he didn’t. 

It probably wasn’t the best way to handle things. 

~*~

“You’re sorry?” Stiles says slowly, “You’re  _ sorry?”  _

“I had to leave,” Derek says, and Stiles hates that he  _ knows _ it’s true. “I had to leave and I hated it, because I hated leaving you.”

“You bastard,” Stiles breathes, and Derek stares at him. Patient and waiting, like he has been always waiting, and he  _ hasn’t _ , he  _ left, _ he has no  _ right.  _ “You  _ bastard,”  _ Stiles snarls and he punches Derek. Just once, just enough for the werewolf to snarl, and for him to yelp, cradling his hand. 

“ _ Fuck, Stiles!” _ Derek snarls, and there--

_ There _ is his Derek. Not this polite, careful person doling out bits of family minutia. His Derek was fire and fury, rage and regret, the sharp rocks Stiles threw himself on, the soft hands that always caught him. 

“ _ Fuck you!”  _ Stiles screams, fighting the hold Derek has on him, on his wrist, when the hell did he catch Stiles’ wrist, “fuck you, you can’t  _ do  _ this again! You  _ don’t  _ get to come back and tell me you’re sorry before you leave again.”

“Stiles!” Derek shouts, and Stiles snarls, clawing uselessly at the air, “Stiles,  _ stop.” _

“You  _ left me!”  _ Stiles shouts and the fight drains out of him, his heart pounding and his eyes burning, “You  _ left _ \--oh god, Derek, you left  _ me.”  _

He crumples, his heart pounding, his breath hitching in his throat. 

And Derek catches him. 

~*~

Derek cradles him, and Stiles fights it, fights the comforting familiar arms pulling him into a strong chest, the hand warm on the nape of his neck, tucking him under the werewolf’s chin. 

He doesn’t want comfort. He wants his anger, because his anger is familiar and comforting and doesn’t run off with bounty hunters for six fucking  _ years. _

_ “ _ I hated you for leaving,” he whispers. Tucked under Derek’s chin, unable to look at the werewolf, it’s easier to speak. 

“I know.” 

“I called you.” 

_ “I know.” _

Something too broken to be called anger hitches in his chest, and he says, plaintively, “Why?” 

“Beacon Hills--Stiles, it had taken every good thing from me. My family, my sister, my pack. My new pack. My powers and safety. It was destroying me, and I was watching it do the same thing to you and Scott and I--I couldn’t stay and watch it happen. I had to get away.” 

“And you couldn’t call home, just to tell us you were alive?” 

“I wanted to. I used to type texts to you, all the time.” 

Stiles goes still, and Derek rubs a slow hand over the bumps of his spine. Soothing the tension that settles over him. “I deleted your number or I would have given in and text you. Still wrote you all the time. A thousand unsent text messages.” 

There’s too much there to unpack, so Stiles presses harder into Derek’s chest and mumbles. “Why are you back now?”

“For you,” Derek says, simply. 

~*~

Nothing about Derek Hale is simple. But this. 

This is. 

~*~

“I’m mad at you,” Stiles says. He’s shifted, away from Derek, enough that he can look up. Derek’s arms are a steady band around his back, holding him in place and keeping him from falling and isn’t that the truth about who and what they are? 

Always keeping each other from falling.

“You’re allowed to be,” Derek says, earnestly, honestly. “I would be.” 

Stiles catches him in a kiss, so suddenly that it cuts Derek off, and he’s still and stiff for a heartbeat, just one, before his arms tighten around Stiles and his mouth opens in a low groan. 

“I’m  _ mad _ at you,” Stiles snarls, dragging away from his lips to press kisses into his stubble, nip at his jaw, and he almost curses when Derek  _ whimpers _ and lets his head fall back, baring his throat. 

“I know,” Derek murmurs. 

“But it’s fucking Christmas,” Stiles mutters and dips down, biting hard over Derek’s pounding pulse, and revealing in the way Derek moans his name. 

~*~

When Derek left, it broke something in Stiles. He stopped thinking about the future, stopped thinking about what life would be like when things finally settled down and he could think about  _ being. _

He wasn’t sure how to do that, without Derek involved, and no one would understand that because  _ he _ didn’t understand it. 

So he quit trying. He did what he had to do to keep the pack safe and to keep them from worrying but it wasn’t living, not truly. 

He didn’t let himself think about Derek, except in those rare moments when he was hard and lonely and the moon hung thin and silver above him. 

This. 

This is nothing like that. 

~*~

Derek presses him down into the mattress and Stiles inhales the scent of the wolf, of sea salt and wind and sex, fresh and new, and he moans, from Derek’s fingers pressing into him or his lips, whispering promises into the soft skin on his thigh, or the scent, the fucking  _ scent _ of them, when he thought he’d never have this. 

Derek is gentle, but fierce, careful with his roughness and it makes Stiles’ heart ache, as the werewolf carefully opens him up on two fingers pushed in hard and rough, teeth nipping and stealing kisses that leave his mouth wet and swollen. 

His grip is bruise heavy and possessive and Stiles twists into it, panting as he rides Derek’s fingers and kisses him, open mouthed and desperate. 

When Derek slides in, it’s not a slow easing, and Stiles hides his face in Derek’s shoulders, presses tears of relief and something he doesn’t want to name into his skin and Derek mouths at his neck, not biting, but Stiles thinks it’s because he isn’t coordinated enough for it. 

He sure as hell isn’t coordinated for anything more than holding on, an arm around Derek’s neck and whimpering into his throat as Derek fucks him. 

~*~

The water lapping against the sides of the boat is soothing as he pants against Derek’s chest. Derek’s fingers are still pressed inside him, pressing come into him and it should feel too intimate, too much too soon, but it’s comforting and he arches a little, pushes into it, turns to kiss Derek slow and lazy. 

“One day will you take me out on the water?” he asks, and it’s a test, he knows it is, because Derek hasn’t said anything about the future, about  _ staying _ . 

Derek blinks at him, and nods, giving him a little smile. 

“Why the king?” Stiles asks and Derek blinks. 

~*~

The brown paper sat messy on the desk, and he stared at the contents of the box, a black bound journal tied with a silver ribbon, a plain black chess piece--the king--and a simple slip of paper, with a familiar, delicate scrawl. 

An address and a puzzle and maybe-- _ maybe-- _ answers. 

~*~

He stares at Derek, holding the king out now, and Derek smiles, at him. 

“I fought a long time, you know. This. Wanting you. I was so sure I knew what you needed and I couldn’t get out of my own way to see that you’ve always taken what you needed, what you wanted.” 

“Not everything,” Stiles says, staring steady at Derek and something like sorrow flickers in the older man’s eyes. 

“I--I’m tired, Stiles. I’m tired of fighting this. Fighting what I want and what you want, and watching you from too far away. So I’m done. I’m here. All in--I’m tipping my king. You win.” 

He says it simply, like it’s not shaking apart everything Stiles knows, maybe it  _ is  _ simple. 

Maybe they always were. 

Stiles makes a noise, and Derek pulls him close, kisses him quiet, soothes his trembling with solid, steady arms holding him close. 

~*~

“I’m still mad,” Stiles says, sleepily, much later. Derek nods and kisses his hair. 

“I know.” 

“What was the book?”

Derek is quiet and flushed when Stiles peers up at him, and it makes a smile spread, wide and startled across his lips. 

“I didn’t--I wanted you to know, if you didn’t come. If you didn’t want to see me, I wanted you to know that I thought about you. It’s--After a while, I started writing them down, all the things I wanted to say and never sent to you.” 

Stiles’s face goes soft with wonder and affection, and he whispers, touching Derek’s jawline softly, “A thousand unsent text messages.” 

~*~ 

When Derek left, it broke something in him. Something he didn’t acknowledge, just carried with him, the walking wounded, for all the long years he pretended everything was fine and it  _ wasn’t. _

He  _ wasn’t.  _

But now, pressed to Derek’s side, he thinks he could be. 

Maybe, he thinks, as the sun comes up and Derek stirs, and kisses him sleepily, they can both be whole, and unbroken, together. 

**Author's Note:**

> Start of a panic attack, argument that begins to escalate to violence before it eases.


End file.
